Lesson 5: The Cone of Experience by Edgar Dale

1. Lesson 5:
The Cone OF Experience
“The Cone is a visual analogy, and like all analogies,
it does not bear an exact and detailed relationship to
the complex elements it represents”
-Edgar Dale

2. DIRECT PURPOSEFUL EXPERIENCE
• These are first hand experiences
which serve as the foundation of
our learning. We build up our
reservoir of meaningful
information and ideas through
seeing, hearing, touching, tasting
and smelling.

3. Contrived Experiences
• We make use of a representative
models or mock ups of reality for
practical reasons and so that we can
make the real-life accessible to the
students’ perceptions and
understanding.

4. Dramatized experiences
• We can participate in a
reconstructed experience,
even though the original
events is far removed from us
in time.

5. Demonstrations
• It is a visualized explanation of an
important fact, idea or process by
the use of photographs,
drawings, films, displays, or
guided motions. It is showing
how things are done.

6. Study trips
• These are excursions,
educational trips, and visits
conducted to observe an event
that is unavailable within the
classroom.

7. Exhibits
• These are displays to be seen by
spectators. They may consist of
working models arranged
meaningfully or photographs with
models, charts, and posters.
Sometimes exhibits are “for your
eyes only.”

8. Television and motion pictures
•Television and motion
pictures can reconstruct
the reality of the past so
effectively that we are
made to feel we are there.

9. Still pictures, Recordings, Radio
• These are visual and auditory devices
which may be used by an individual or a
group. Still pictures lack the sound and
motion of a sound film. The radio
broadcast of an actual event may often
be likened to a televised broadcast minus
its visual dimension.

10. Visual symbols
• These are no longer realistic
reproduction or physical things
for these are highly abstract
representations. Examples are
charts, graphs, maps, and
diagrams.

11. Verbal symbols
• They are not like the objects or
ideas for which they stand. They
usually do not contain visual
clues to their meaning. Written
words fall under this category.